Teaching To Test, Youth Working to Outcomes : Surviving with Integrity – Friday, November 7 in Birmingham

Simply to confirm afresh that our Creative Resistance seminar will be held in the School of Education, Edgbaston Campus, University of Birmingham on Friday, November 7. Please circulate the flyer.

IN DEFENCE OF YOUTH WORK

ENGAGING CRITICALLY SEMINAR

AFTER CREATIVE COLLISIONS, CREATIVE RESISTANCE : WHY? WHERE? HOW?

Friday, November 7, 2014 in Room 139, School of Education, University of Birmingham from 11.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

In the last few months discussions within at least parts of the In Defence Network have revealed increasing frustration and concern. On the ground, as youth services continue to disappear, workers and agencies battle for survival. There seems little option, but to join, albeit grudgingly, the competition for funding, to mouth the mantra of outcomes. Meanwhile, if we are to believe the tweets on Twitter, the Creative Collisions partners [CC] are in a state of euphoria about their forthcoming conference on Thursday, November 6.

As we have indicated some of our supporters will be at the CC event seeking to understand better the gap between rhetoric and reality in the diminishing world of youth work as a distinctive practice, the gulf between the tradition we seek to defend and the diversity of practice, now defined as the ‘youth sector’.

Thus on Friday, November 7 our ‘Creating Resistance’ seminar will see us having to tangle with some uncomfortable realities. For example, small voluntary organisations utterly committed to our definition of Youth Work’s cornerstones are struggling with the tensions imposed by the prescribed character of funding streams. In terms of the training agencies student placements in youth work settings are few and far between. In short how are we to respond to an instrumental stranglehold on the very character of our relations with young people?

We need to be open, honest and self-critical about our differing situations. We need to do so in a supportive, yet questioning atmosphere. We can’t pretend our event will be euphoric and exciting in any literal sense. We can guarantee it will be lively and stimulating. We hope to see you there.